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Chinese-born writer Gao Xingjian won the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature
Oct. 12. The Swedish Academy said Gao's work showed "universal
validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened
new paths for the Chinese novel and drama."
Gao, now a French citizen living in a Paris suburb, left his native
China in 1987, a year after the Communist regime banned his play, The
Other Shore. Among Gao's best known works is Soul Mountain,
the story of a journey through the remote Chinese countryside in a search
for roots, inner peace and liberty. Horace Engdahl of the Swedish Academy
said "Soul Mountain is one of the most remarkable creations
of modern literature, not only Chinese."
Gao wrote Soul Mountain after his own 10-month walking tour
of central China. He embarked on the travels after Beijing banned The
Other Shore in 1986 in a crackdown on foreign influence in the arts.
His other works were banned after the release of his play, Fugitives,
set against the background of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Born in 1940, Gao grew up during the aftermath of the Japanese invasion
of China and later earned a degree in French in 1962 from Beijing's
Department of Foreign Languages. He was sent to a "re-education"
camp during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 where he burned
a suitcase full of manuscripts. Gao is also an active painter in ink.
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